President Boris Yeltsin is likely to announce an increased role for the state in Russia's economy when he addresses the upper chamber of parliament today.

A Kremlin source said Mr Yeltsin was likely to say the state intended to take some of the most vital areas under its control. The source said the president's speech would stress that the free market had been instrumental in breaking away from the Soviet centrally planned economy but that the time had come to introduce new rules. Reuters